The US Coast Guard just tweeted this photo of a coyote running across ice, taken from one of its ships in the Boston Harbor, near Quincy. I imagine this is what would happen if humans were destroyed, civilization disappeared forever, and everything was cold and miserable—which sounds like Boston to me.

Back in 1990, in an awesome piece for The New Yorker, author Ian Frazier told the—shall we say—little-known story of Wile E. Coyote's endless legal battles with the Acme Company. Now, the tale of Coyote's legal tribulations, suing Acme for grievous personal injury and catastrophic product malfunction, has been …

Temperatures could hit 129 degrees Fahrenheit this weekend in California's deserts, the National Weather Service warns, while Phoenix should see 118 and Las Vegas will reach 117—heat levels rarely seen even in the scorching Southwestern U.S.

Just 11,500 years ago, coyotes were about 1.5 times as big as they are today. By 10,000 years ago, they had shrunk to their current proportions. What could have made these predators get so much smaller, so quickly?